


Afternoon of Adventure

by Nightalp



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: Adventure, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightalp/pseuds/Nightalp
Summary: Moon is teaching Ember hunting. Of course, since Moon is involved, that can't go quite without an adventure.At least there are no monsters bend on destroying the court around this time.
Relationships: Ember & Moon (Books of the Raksura), Ember & Stone (Books of the Raksura)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Afternoon of Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreyskdramablog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyskdramablog/gifts).



> I loved this prompt, because it allowed me to write about some of my favorite Raksura.   
> Sadly, my first take on this prompt took a sharp turn towards Ember-centric (how did that happen?????) so I had to give it up and wrote a whole lot of fluff instead (Not that that is bad XD).   
> Hope you'll like it!

They were down on one of the lower branches of one of the neigbouring mountain trees, with Moon teaching him how to hunt grashoppers, when it happened.

One moment the ground under their feet was stable, allowing Moon to demonstrate how Ember had to angle his claws to get them hooked just right into the hoppers to keep them from getting away.

The next he _saw his feet sliding through_ _the moss-covered_ _branch,_ _a oily shimmer coloring the air around him_ , making him lose his balance and flail about trying to regain it. Faintly he noticed a shadow overhead and he squeaked. _A predator. We are going to die._ Then the falling sensation increased, spinning him around like the slides he’d played with as a fledgeling but wthout the debris pelting on him that he remembered from back then.

I nstead everything was unbelievably smooth, more like diving into a pond,  and  there was nothing he could hold onto to  stop or at least slow his fall.

W hen he finally stopped it was not the hard  impact he had expected. Instead his fall slowed bit by b it until he came to a gentle stop  on gras-covered ground .

T rying to keep another embarassing noise in he looked around,  trying to figure out what had happened, while next to him  Moon  flared his spines and wings in threat,  growling low in his throat .

They were on what seemed to be a meadow, w i th  knee-high  gras  slowly  swaying in a gentle breeze.  There were a couple trees in the distance, though the only thing  cose to them were a  couple of  stone  structures gleamin g white in the  midday  sun.

Before he could do more than wonder where those structures – ruins? - and the whole meadow had come from – there _were no_ ruins around the home tree or the warriors and arbora would have found them while exploring the forest. And even with his limited experience he was quite sure that a meadow as big as this one didn’t exist there, either – the dark shadow he’d seen before they had disappeared from their branch appeared over them again.

A  clawed hand landed on his shoulder and he realized that he’d shifted back to groundling form even while he let  Moon push him behind his back.

H e might have shifted back to his winged form if Moon hadn’t suddenly relaxed, his body language becoming that relaxed posture he only ever took on around Jade or Stone,

Realisation followed a moment later,  just as Stone touched down on the grass in front of them and shifted back to groundling form.

In front of him Moon, wary and not yet quite comfortable with Raksuran customs, stayed in his winged form. His eyes locked on Stone and he made a questioning noise.

Taking half a step to look around him Ember noticed that Stone had the strangđ*est expression on his face, a sort of melancholic wonder, while he took in their surroundings.

Turning around himself again Ember tried to figure out what had caught him so.

"It didn't change at all ...", Stone mused, making Moon flick his spines in what was probably shock - he had still trouble reading Moon right.

"You've been here before?", he demanded.

Paying them attention for the first time - well, paying attention to Moon; half the time Ember wasn't sure Stone even realized he existed - Stone nodded slowly. His eyes were still locked on the ruins to their left. "When I was a fledgling. My sister and I escaped our teachers and raced each other through the trees when the ground suddenly disappeared under us."

Ember blinked, startled. It was surprisingly hard to imagine Stone as a fledgling, though unsurprisingly easy to see him escape his caretakers and go exploring.

Moon seemed just as surprised, though he stayed more pragmatic. "The why didn't you tell the arbora about it? Knell will want to know about this."

That got Stone to take his eyes off their surroundings and throw them an annoyed look. "I was a fledgling", he stressed. "Until a few moments ago I wasn't sure I hadn't made it up."

Moon settled a little, mollified. "You know how to get back, then?"

Stone nodded. "The same way we came here", he said which didn't explain anything but before Moon could point that out - and he was about to, his mouth already half-open again - he added: "We should look through the ruins first."

Moon's spine flicked and his tail curled in hesitant confusion. "Shouldn't we call the warriors first?"

His words were quite at odds with his tone of voice: he sounded halfway to the ruins already.

Ember knew how he felt; now that he didn't have to fear where they had landed and how to get back he could feel his own curiosity raise its head, making him take another step away from Moon. Closer to the ruins.

Stone flicking a hand in his direction made him freeze before he could take another. "I thought you wanted him to get more independent? There are no predators here and the ruins themselves should be harmless, too. Let the kid have an adventure."

Being allowed to explore the ruins made him even forget the indignity of being called a kid - and this was Stone anyway, who called _Moon_ _brat_ \- and he took another step towards the ruins.

Behind him Moon huffed. "Fine. But you explain to Jade why we didn't return immediately to get back-up."

Stone growled something under his breath that might just be _kids these days_ though if it was, Moon ignored it in favor of making for the ruins himself.

The structures had been made from a white stone with colorless inclusions that glimmered in the sun. Ember had never seen anything like it before but Moon had seen a couple of villages that had used stone like this while traveling and Stone said that they used this stone to the south of Parhk.

Moon stared at him. "When were you in Parkh?"

Stone shrugged, picking a pebble from the ground and flicking it into the small pond that had formed on one of the platforms. "Before you hatched."

Moon huffed and climbed to the next level, his claws easily digging into the miniscule cracks between the stones.

Ember looked down at the blunt nails he had in his groundling form, then yelped as Stone suddenly shifted next to him and picked him up. Three beats of gigantic black wings later he found himself set down further up.

Stone shifted back to groundling while Ember still fought for his footing. A strong greyed arm, clad in fine black cloth, helped him stay upright. "Shift", Stone ordered. "I don't want to have to deal with the arbora, or Pearl, if you slip and hurt yourself."

Feeling his eyes widen at the command that stood so in contrast to every etiquette lesson he'd been raised - it was one thing for Moon who was first consort to stay shifted when the line-grandfather was in groundling form; it was quite another for _Ember_ to do the same. Yet Stone was right that the ruins couldn't be easily climbed without claws and Ember had already learned that annoying Stone meant getting head-cuffs that were, while not painful, at least as annoying as whatever had provoked Stone to deliver them.

Shifting to his winged form he easily found his footing with his foot claws, making Stone grumble appreciatively at him (Stone was, as far as he knew, the only one who could do that) before releasing his hold on him. "Good. Now go play."

They spend most of the afternoon exploring the ruins which seemed to have housed some kind of four-armed, two-legged creatures with well-armored heads at one point - either that, or the images painted in surprisingly still brilliant colors on the inner walls depicted their ancestors or gods - and, when they got tired, dipped into one of the countless small ponds and puddles scattered on the bigger platforms. Though the meadow was big and open there were no sign of another living being but the loud caw of the birds and, especially when the sun started to sink in earnest, the chirping and humming and sursurring of the insects hidden in the gras.

It meant that Ember did a lot better when being taught again to dive and swerve and roll as he would need to in a hunt than usual, mainly because there were so warriors around watching him and making him feel inferior. Here it was just Moon, patient and calm, and Stone relaxing in the sun, his whole form spread over one of the higher platforms like "a waterspout in Bluayya", as Moon put it.

Ember had no idea what a waterspout was, but if they were anything like Stone they had to be impressive.

When Stone finally declared that they had to return the sun touched the horizon and the insect were loud enough to drown out any still active birds. Both Moon and Ember - though admittedly more Ember - had bits of gras and other greenery sticking to their scales and spines from where they'd landed too hard or gotten tangled in some of the climbing vines covering parts of the ruins and mud caked even more of their scales, so they took a quick dip into another pond to get rid of the worst.

When they were finally somewhat presentable - far from court standards, but reasonable for a day spend out learning to fly in a forest - Stone lead them back.

It turned out to really be _the same way we came here_ , and only a moment later they stood back on the tree branch as if they had never left.

Seeing as the sun was less visible in the forest the twilight had progressed far more than on the meadow, but between Moon's and Stone's reputation - and the fact that quite a few arbora and warriors had seen Moon teaching Ember - no-one seemed to worried that they hadn't returned already. The only one making any fuss at all was Frost who had apparently tried to find Moon to join their hunting lesson.

Ember felt a little guilty for having Moon and Stone for himself for the whole afternoon, though ... he had had Moon and Stone for himself for the whole aftetnoon, and it had been an amazing afternoon.

After a while Stone disappeared - presumably to tell Knell about the passage where an excitable young daughter queen wouldn't listen in - and not too long after Moon allowed himself to get dragged down into the teachers' halls to visit Thorn and Bitter and his own clutch. It might have left Ember feeling left-out, lonely, a stranger - except that he found that this one afternoon had done as much to affirm his place in this court as Pearl taking him as her consort, making warmth spread through his whole body.

Smiling he climbed up to her bower, intend on telling her all - or maybe all the relevant bits; no need to tell her that Stone had decided telling the court could wait the whole afternoon - all about the ruins.

His eyes fell on a spot of still wet mud in the crook of his arm, making him revise his plans.

He would tell her everything - after a nice long bath and a cup of tea.


End file.
